This is a quinoa salad. The reason this was the most challenging was because everything had to be diced which includes the knife skills. I had to make sure which ever vegetables I was cutting they were the same size so the presentation would be nicer. I tried to decorate it the best I could by putting the veggies on the side with the quinoa in the middle and the seeds on top of the quinoa .In my quinoa salad, I had diced cucumber, sliced carrots and peppers, quinoa, some arugula, spinach, chick peas, cashews, pumpkin and chia seeds. Finally to finish off there was a little bit of salad dressing to put on top.
I’ve never had quinoa before that day. I wasn’t to sure of what to expect. the texture of the quinoa was kind of like rice and small seeds combined together. When I tried the quinoa it was fluffy and small. I’ve never had anything like that before. The salad dressing on the top was giving the whole salad an extra flavour. The salad dressing was a bit sour and had a miso taste to it. I felt like once you take a whole bite of the vegetables and the quinoa all together it tastes better!
This is a carrot muffin. It was the most successful because they came out tasting and looking good. The hardest part of this lab was grating the carrots because they were really small and hard to grate. I couldn’t smell anything at the beginning because it was just carrots but towards the end while in the oven I could really smell it. I started off by grating the carrots while my partner was working on the flour and liquid mixtures. When mixing the carrots and ingredients together we had to make sure we didn’t over mix the mixture or unevenly mix it. After that we poured the batter into the muffin tins. When the muffins came out of the oven they were evenly round and were similar size and shape. The product turned out well since we did not overmix the mixture which was the key part to this lab.
Inside this muffin in this picture is a little bit of cream cheese frosting that Ms. Bolli made for us. She didn’t add too much or too little into the muffin. It was the perfect amount. I’ve never actually ate a carrot muffin with cream cheese frosting in it before, but after that I think I’m gonna have to eat it again! Also inside the muffin was some pineapple. I couldn’t taste the pineapples really but instead made the muffins more moist and added extra flavour to it.
This was my favourite foods lab. It was a grilled cheese sandwich. The reason why it is my favourite is because it tasted good and was easy to make. Basically all I did was butter the bread add cheese and whatever else I wanted so I chose tomatoes. Even though I used butter on the bread, I watch some videos before and it said that you could use mayo instead of butter. At first, my grilled cheese was turning brown or melting the cheese, but then I found out that my pan was only on 1 when it was supposed to be on medium. Once I turned it higher, it started cooking.
Throughout this lab, I was trying to make sure the cheese inside was equally melted and the outside was a crispy brown. and my finished lab looked like that. A hard part about this was flipping the grilled cheese. I tried really hard not to make the bread separate from the other slice of bread. Usually I don’t add anything into my grilled cheese except cheese but this time I added tomatoes and 2 kinds of cheese. The most successful part was liking the tomatoes. I usually don’t like tomatoes, but it gave the grilled cheese more flavour and tasted good!
This is what I made for my breakfast home lab. It’s a breakfast hash with peppers onions tomatoes potatoes bacon sausage broccoli and mushrooms. While I was making this, here were so many different things to do and I thought I was gonna burn something. Luckily I didn’t though. I started making this at about 10am and finished at around 11:15am. It probably could’ve been a little faster, but I think it was pretty good for my first home lab.
Mise en place
I first started off by dicing and cutting all my ingredients. Mise en place. I diced the onions and peppers, then sliced the sausage bacon tomatoes and mushrooms, grated the potatoes and cheese. This part was petty easy to manage except when I cut the onions and it made my eyes water. After prepping everything I began cooking. I first stared off by sautéing the onions with some butter. I didn’t want them to be brown but I wanted them cooked. I added in peppers next. I knew my pan was too hot when the peppers started to brown after a few minutes. After the mushrooms were done I transferred all the veggies onto another plate so I could cook the meats.
I cooked the bacon first then added in sausage and at the same time I started frying the potatoes on a different pan. The potatoes took a little longer so I should’ve cooked them at the beginning. I knew the potatoes were done once they were crispy and golden brown in colour. Since all my prep was now finished I layered the potatoes, then veggies, then meat, then tomatoes and finally cracked an egg on top and put that into the oven. While it was cooking I started the dishes and toasted the bread. Once everything was done, I garnished it with some green onion and I served it to my parents.
Overall I think I did pretty well on this. While I was making this I could hear the sounds of sizzling veggies and smell the bacon. I made sure I tasted everything to know if it needed more seasoning or less. I could feel each vegetable size and shape and made sure they were about the same for each one. At the end I could tell that it was a successful lab by looking at it! The hardest part would have to be making sure I didn’t break the egg yolk. The way I did it was I cracked it on top the put it into the oven before putting the cheese on so it had a little time to cook a bit .
This is me and my partners breakfast hash. A breakfast hash is basically anything you want in it and into the oven. During this lab, I got to practice my knife skills. I was in charge of cutting the onion, pepper, bacon and garlic. The most challenging part about this lab is cooking the bacon. At first the bacon was fine in the pan but a few minutes later, it started sizzling. Both me and my partner tried flipping it but the oil from the bacon kept popping. This is were our communication skills were needed.
Communicating is a big apart of cooking, why? If you don’t talk to each other how are you gonna know what to do. Say you were cooking a full meal and nobody talked to each other. Who’s gonna cook this, who’s gonna prep that? The worse thing that could happen is you both end up cooking the same thing. That would just waste your time. Before me and my partner even started cooking we discussed what needed to be done and who was doing what. After agreeing on what each person does we got started. Like I was saying earlier about the bacon. I asked her what I should do and she told me to take it off the heat to let it cool so I could flip it and it worked. If I tried to do whatever I wanted and not discuss among my peers, it would be such chaos and it would never work out. I believe that communication is such a big part of cooking!
On September 31, I made omelets in my foods class. We got to put whatever vegetables we wanted inside. Inside mine, I put potatoes, peppers, kale, a bit of jalapeño and arugula. This was the first time I’ve ever tied arugula. I couldn’t taste it a whole lot but it was a bit bitter with a watery taste to it. During this lab I learned what sautéing vegetables was. Once I sautéed the vegetables, I transferred it to a plate and starting cooking the actual omelet. The most successful part about this lab when definitely not burning or browning to egg. Even though that was successful there were some parts that weren’t. Sliding the omelet off of the pan was a bit difficult. I’m pretty sure it was because I didn’t add enough butter to the pan. The other challenging part about the omelets was getting all the veggies similar size and shape. This is Knife Skills. In the lab I started cutting the peppers first. The peppers have an outside skin but once yo cut through it its easier the cut. This is why knife skills are important. You need to know how much pressure to put so you can cut through.
The picture above shows how you hold a knife properly. The reason you hold it like this is because you need to use wrist and cut smooth without lifting the knife from the cutting board. There are other ways to hold and use a knife but this is the one I learned how to use. Some other types of knives are butter knives, bread knives, paring knives and many more. On that day I only needed to use the chefs knife but I know in the future I will be needing to use some of the other knives too.
About 2 or 3 years ago, I was having a a Christmas dinner with all of my family. Aunts, uncles, cousins, everyone was there. It was so packed but still so much fun at the same time. This was at my grandmas house and probably about 40 people showed up! Every year my uncle is the one who makes the dinner and he makes everything by himself. When he barely started, he asked me if I wanted to help him this year. It was so surprising that he even asked me. Out of the 40 people he wanted me to help him. I ended up helping cook the whole dinner and I even got to know his secret recipe on how to cook the turkey perfectly. Ever since that day I’ve helped with all the big dinners with just me and my uncles in the kitchen.
